International Writer of Mystery

At first, he seemed like the answer to her prayers. He was the strong protector she craved for herself and her children…and of course, it didn’t hurt that he was rich and generous, too. By day, she loved going for long walks in the woods with him, and by night, she felt safe and secure with him lying by her side. When he proposed, she eagerly signed the paper that joined their lives together.

But before long, her children began to tell of suffering horrible violence at his hands. When she broached the subject with him, he would only say, “There are people out there who want to hurt them. They need to learn to defend themselves.” And she would be satisfied with that explanation, and put the incident out of her mind…until the next time.

Her friends all worried about her. Her best friend asked her one day, “Don’t you think you’d be better off without him?”

“But I love him!” she replied. “What business is it of yours, anyway? Doesn’t the same thing happen in your house?”

“It does,” said her friend, “but it happens more often in a week in your house than in a year in mine. Something is very wrong.”

“I can’t just leave him,” she said, “after all he’s given me. And besides, without him, who would protect me?”

“Can’t you see?” her friend shouted. “He’s the one you need protection from!”

But she continued to turn a blind eye. Until, one day, she witnessed the most brutal attack on her children yet, in a city that until then had only held happy memories of family vacations.

She finally confronted him. “This has gone too far! I don’t want you anywhere near me or my children ever again!”

“I have never laid a hand on you…yet,” he replied. “But if you try to leave me…”

“Enough of your threats!” she shouted. “You and I are through!”

He laughed. “You and I can never be through. With your own hand, you wrote these words that made you mine forever.” And he showed her the parchment, with the words written in her own fine calligraphy:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.